Another day, another horribly botched reply-all email chain nightmare.
This time it happened in the media world (and really, we should know better).
It all started when Columbia Journalism School blasted out an email to media professionals about the school's upcoming jobs fair.
"For some reason, any email to the Columbia address that sent the original letter went to everyone on the list," writes Deadspin's Barry Petchesky, who compiled (and egged on) the unfortunate series of events. "This was about the point where you could see the car wreck coming, and there was nothing to do but pray others could see it too."
As Petchesky notes, what makes reply-all email chains so beautiful is the hypnotizing interplay between the "take me off" and "everyone stop responding" pleas. Some highlights (from Deadspin):
Please remove me from your mailing list. Thank you.
I have received at least 4 if not 5 emails one after the other on this. Please get the problem under control.
I'd like to be removed as well
please remove me from this list, thanks!
OK [This was a producer at Vice trolling]
Hey guys, what's up? Anyone have any good stories to tell? Share them and definitely hit reply all. [This was Deadspin trolling.]
THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A VIRUS. CAN PEOPLE PLEASE REFRAIN FROM ASKING TO BE REMOVED? YOUR REQUESTS ARE GOING OUT TO EVERYONE. JUST STOP AND THE PROBLEM WILL BE SOLVED.
1. Replying "please remove me" won't remove you from the mailing list.
2. It will actively make this whole thing worse.
3. I'm going to be publishing this whole chain later on, so if you
don't want to look dumb, consider this your warning.
You won't listen, though [Deadspin again]
You guys are all replying to an email LISTSERV, which means it's going out to everyone and their mother on said list. If my phone buzzes one more time I'm going to flush it down the toilet. And I bet that will make my boss really mad.
And so on. You can see the full chain, complete with the full list of offenders here.